


Chrysalis

by FingolfinSilme



Series: An Odyssey of Neons and Railroad Tracks [1]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Ants, Butterflies, Capitalism, Ceres, Demeter - freeform, Doriath, F/M, Feminist Themes, Industrial Revolution, Melian - Freeform, Mention of Greek Myth, Mirror of Galadriel, Mourning, Nature, Patriarchy, Talismans, Thingol - Freeform, Trees, also i was depressed af while writing this so it's probably weird idk, drug mention, dying, evocative language, forest, girdle of melian, insects in general, luthien mentioned, maybe there's some influence from like king's sleeping beauties?, melian the lepidopterist, river - Freeform, somehow I managed to make this lesbian, sorta - Freeform, unconventional dying, waning nature, what else?, witchcraft mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-17
Updated: 2020-10-17
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26931061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FingolfinSilme/pseuds/FingolfinSilme
Summary: This is a weird one-shot I wrote half for Doriath week on Tumblr, half because I'm a depressed bitch even though it's October and also I planned it in an hour in philosophy class and wrote it at midnight that same day while being under the influence of drug-like novels. Yeah, that happens a lot. Like Angela Carter. She makes my brain go wonky. Sorry, this was really going to be like the other one in the series (Nature Morte) but then shit happened and I sort of lost my focus point. Anywaaaaaay, the summary is: Melian mourns Thingol's death and disappears into the forest.
Relationships: Elu Thingol | Elwë Singollo/Melian
Series: An Odyssey of Neons and Railroad Tracks [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1965061
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3
Collections: Doriath Week 2020





	Chrysalis

Bones and remains of leftover fruit cluttered in a pile in the centre of the table. The transparent golden cup was half full of nectar, and the plates, hot from the oven when they had arrived in the room, now laid cold and untouched like a widowed bride on the mahogany table.

Melian stood up, feeling cold too, though pearls of sweat formed at her temples. The air and fumes emanating from the forges and spontaneously appearing in the air everywhere had grown hotter since Thingol had died.

The Queen sighed, the silk of her dress heavy on her shoulders, and stepped towards the looking glass. There, her sallow face watched her with languid, half-closed eyes. She had not slept in days.

Her gaze moved away from her reflection, settled on the shelf over the sink, where bright vials sat in a neat file. The light of the flickering bulb behind her made the purple and yellow liquids shine and reflect on the pink marble of the sink, on the pores of her nose and on the petals of dried fragrant roses.

Melian picked one up between her long fingers, looked at it for a few seconds and dropped it into the water basin. It floated for a moment, but then the dehydrated petals absorbed the rotten liquid and sank, disappearing into the murky and bottomless water.

Hanging from the shelf, there were old talismans on chains. Beetles, sparrows, blades of grass trapped within blue-tinted diamond-shaped crystals. 

The Queen wrapped her hand over the pendants and pulled on them. One chain snapped and pearls rippled into the basin, like rocks falling into a river after a landslide. The others held to the shelf and sent it crashing in front of Melian’s feet, forming a pool of colour about her, resembling the rainbow of petroleum on the roads.

Shards of glass spiralled on the marble floor and turned to dust, consumed by the cracks between the stones.

Melian ignored the mess she had made and reached into a drawer for an orange plastic box. This one, translucid, looked more like the wings of a butterfly. She had pinned one to a tree, once, in Valinor. Its wings, held by the metal pins, cast orange shapes of stained glass on a trunk. Like a monochromatic discotheque for the termites.

She turned it around in her hand, watched it with eyes of glass from which hazy chandeliers fell, dropping into the canvas of her lipstick pot. When she popped the container open like a bottle of champagne, she winced, knowing this analogy was incorrect, for champagne was a much slower poison. Like magnetic agitators at the bottom of an acid solution, the pills sat on her open palm, spinning in search of the polarity of her sadness. And just as the agitators made the chemical solution clear, the pills had the reputation of making ideas transparent and exposing solutions to clouded minds.

Melian threw the pills into the open crack at her throat where the breathing tubes usually went with an exaggerated gesture.

Spinning around, she let the white cloth of her mourning dress embrace her shoulders and thighs and she exited the room, feeling sick.

_Oh, Mother mine, bring me back to your waters where I once played. Remember when I prayed for the yellow touch of your rejuvenating hand upon the wrinkles of my brows, and when the breath of Man had not yet entered me. ___

__Under the high arches of Menegroth, spidery threads of silk choaked and throated all who walked past and made the hallway look like a foggy tunnel. Sometimes, Melian walked there in the light of the moon, when she was too warm to feel Thingol’s presence next to her without squirming, or when the ache of his eyes upon her made her breathless and nauseous. She hadn’t known what nausea was until that night when his eyes had travelled down her frame, so slowly that she thought she might die before his gaze reached the curve of her stomach._ _

__She drifted in and out of consciousness as she glided towards the palace’s front arch. On the walls, damp and matt stones, glittering even if the curtains were all drawn like in a coffin, pulled at Melian’s too long train, at her too swollen hair, grazed the knuckles of her inadequate fingers. She wanted to pull them out of the walls, one by one until her nails bled and the skin under them was purple and green with bruises._ _

__The lights of the hallway turned on gradually as she walked. The blinding hospital glare of the lamps incrusted into the ceiling revealed the dust lifted by Melian’s dress, as well as the long rivers of green mould on the walls, throwing themselves into an ocean of toxic, unnatural bacteria._ _

__Outside, the air was hotter and smelled like sulfur. The river under the bridge that led outside to the crippled forest gurgled and sputtered; heavy and stinging fumes emanated from the surface, licking at the palace’s walls. Down the river, barrels of coal were carried by the current, too expensive for the contaminated water to let it sink._ _

__Melian crossed the bridge, listening for a reminder of what Doriath used to be. Before, she could walk out and remember how Lùthien sang and laughed in the woods, how the scrupe of her bare feet in the grass had made many heads turn as if in the presence of a spirit of Ceres._ _

__But now, she could only hear pickaxes hitting metal, the beeping of construction vehicles and the incessant clicking of industrial mills eating the forest out like a hungry band of maggots would rid a corpse of its dignity._ _

___Mother mine if in your fantasies the train of foreigners’ thoughts appears in a cloud of intoxicating golden smoke, stop it with your vines and drink their blood or so help me, the bones of my neck shall snap. ____ _

____The Queen kicked off her shoes to feel the soil between her toes, but the grass was hard and dry and burnt her skin and the scorpions and hornets bit her legs, revealed from under her dress by the complicit wind._ _ _ _

____Besides, there was no soil. The earth had turned into gravel, deprived of the minerals of dead plants and animals, which were extracted before nature could do its work, to be injected into the veins of batteries._ _ _ _

____The sky was grey all the time. A light, invisible grey which, when you looked at it for too long, tricked you into believing it was blue. Most people were alright with that. They took grey for blue, laughed it off and let themselves be tanned by the deadly Sun. Melian knew the Sun was out to kill her. It was an even slower poison than champagne, she reflected. It crept into your cells and killed you from the inside out, making your body grow abnormally large and convulsive._ _ _ _

____Shielding her eyes with her hand, she advanced towards the edges of the Kingdom. She barely dared pronounce that word. What was a Kingdom without a king? An empty entity?_ _ _ _

____In some parts of the forest, the sound of tree-cutting machines grew loud enough for the vomiting of lost women to be covered and briefly forgotten. At other places, it was so quiet that Melian thought she had died suddenly, or that the whole universe had collapsed onto itself. It didn’t scare her, really. It made her sad, mostly, to think that the world beyond Doriath could not hear the theme of chainsaws and chemical reactions which polluted lungs and ears._ _ _ _

____And yet, when she reached the fatal border of the forest, her feet lifted from the ground and solitary blades of grass sprouted from the land and strove towards the sky with a music of saxophone._ _ _ _

_____Oh Mother mine, how you would say; sing so soft that the air stops to listen. Walk so slow you can count the days with the feathers on your skin. ____ _ _ _

______The girdle was invisible to untrained eyes, but to Melian, it lighted the whole world with its radiance. A thin curtain rain of diamonds sparkled mid-air, pulling her with its slow ballad and electronic harp melody._ _ _ _ _ _

______Melian did not hesitate and entered the thin pace between the Kingdom and the unprotected forest. Looking through the girdle as she would look past the glass of an aquarium, the Maia saw Doriath in its ancient splendour. Under her feet, the soft grass, like a wool carpet, stroked her wounds and healed her. Birds softened the hissing in her ears. The leaves were green. Full. Lush. It smelled good. Like inside her mothers’ womb._ _ _ _ _ _

______And when she sat down in the humid earth, Irmo came to her. They twirled about her hair, kissed her temples and giggled in the crook of her neck. But Melian ignored them. She laid down but did not wish to sleep or dream, her eyes fixed upon the waxing moon, the comets descending upon the earth and on the warm, smiling Sun emerging from behind puffy white clouds._ _ _ _ _ _

______Instead of indulging in the Vala’s offerings, Melian contemplated the expanse of the universe. And she laughed. How foolish the mortal frenzy was. The seizure of legacy, innovation and reproduction made her sick with fury, but she laughed nonetheless. They would cut down trees to ascribe upon the slices of their trunks the memories of their vile lives, overturn the river’s bed to craft the jewels of their descendant’s weddings and flatten mountains for the monuments of their dead._ _ _ _ _ _

______Melian exhaled deeply, out of breath. She threw her arms over her head, let the apex of her realisation wash over her in the shape of rippling shudders of delight and pain._ _ _ _ _ _

______When she turned her head, Yavanna was next to her. They were silent for a moment, and then they started singing._ _ _ _ _ _

_______Make love to me, O Goddess of my Mother, beneath the sky of the end of the world. Take me home to free my womb from the black pits of their mythical prison they like to call womanhood. ____ _ _ _ _ _

________Yavanna laced their fingers into Melian’s and with their nails pressed the words of the oldest of incantations onto her palm and the pain gave the Maia visions of blooming flowers and optic lenses turning into butterflies._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________In the pool of her waters, knees drawn towards her chest, Melian was left alone with the sky. She hummed under her breath, threw handfuls of earth onto her face and down her throat and wove her arms in intricate shapes._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________The free lasers of the leaves turned red, flashed and turned off. The entire forest shook and became black and white._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________And for a moment, the grass was synthetic, the trunks cardboard and concrete, the songs of birds pre-recorded and diffused by speakers disguised as hives._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Slowly, Melian felt herself morph into liquid mud and sink into the rich brown soil._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Soon, her dress was not shaped by the curves of her body but by the round rocks on the forest floor._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________Melian opened her countless eyes and for the first time she was able to see._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

________She saw the sky in the bird’s flight, she saw the colony of ants morphing into a black puddle of swarming vapour. She saw the ice turn into liquid water and the bud burgeoning into a flower and the sand being lapped by the waves. And she saw the smell of a girl’s hair as she knitted flowers into her braids and the smile of a mother before her baby’s crib and she saw herself throwing her head back when the wind turned back into a woman and engulfed into her._ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

_________O, Mother mine, tell my friends I am reborn, that my hearts are numerous. Put away your lovely scars and listen to your daughter’s voice when she burns hotter than the lips of her first lover and she raises her head put of the water and back into the land of her ancestors. Mother, sing: she has returned, and all the world shall rejoice. ____ _ _ _ _ _ _ _


End file.
